We bring you a summary of today’s Diablo 4 Campfire Chat! The latest stream is mostly dedicated to class changes that will arrive with the Season 2 patch.
Highlights
We’re liveblogging today’s Diablo 4 Campfire Chat, so check back often for updates!
Season of Blood Strategy
Focus on addressing player feedback and making systematic improvements:
5-point strategy:
- Update Elemental resistances
- Make Uniques more exciting and impactful.
- Class Improvements to address commonly talked about issues.
- Update Damage Buckets (Vulnerable + Crit > everything else)
- Make our changes a bonus.
Elemental Resistances
Blizzard highlighted changes coming to Resistances in the Season 2 patch.
How things work now in Season 1 (Inverse Multiplicative):
- You have 20% Poison Resistance, you gain 20% more, you now have 36% Poison Resistance.
- Resistances had no hard cap, and could gain “infinitely.”
- Armor reduces both elemental and physical damage taken.
How things will work in Season of Blood (Additive):
- You have 20% Poison Resistance, you gain 20% more, you now have 40% Poison Resistance.
- Resistances have a base cap at 70%. Can go to 85% with new effects that increase the cap.
- Armor now only resists Physical Damage – used to do both.
- Rings / Amulets will have All Resistance.
- Have to get specific resistances via Gear, Paragon, Skill Tree, etc.
Overall Impact
- Resistances will matter more.
- Resistances will be more complex, there is a puzzle to solve.
Goals with an end point
- Players should be able to hit the 70% cap at Level 80 for most Resistances.
- Players shouldn’t fall too far behind that’s why they are adding All Resist to Rings/Amulets as a failsafe to ensure players have minimum amount of Resistance.
- Puzzle to solve, many paths to max. Use gear, Paragon, Elixirs etc. to get to and raise cap. Resistances is more about the journey than the destination. Elixirs will be a great way to shore up any Resistance deficiencies for a specific fight.
Changes to Uniques
Uniques are generally not exciting enough. Too often players do not feel good when they drop, even for builds that they’re intended for. As a result, Blizzard did a giant pass and updated nearly every single Unique in the game.
Blizzard is using a 4-fold strategy using fake examples):
- New Stats — “Increased Tornado duration” isn’t a stat, but now it exists on this one Unique!
- Larger existing stat ranges — Bonus Fire damage normally rolls between +15-25%, but on this item it’s a +30-45%!
- Override Slot Rules — Cooldown Reduction can’t normally roll on a weapon, but on this Unique it does!
- Updated Unique Effects – This Unique normally requires hitting enemies from behind on Tuesdays, but now it just works when hitting enemies.
The devs showcased changes coming to Fists of Fate, Grasp of Shadow, and other items that you will find below.
New Legendaries in Season 2
Flickerstep reduces the Ultimate’s cooldown when evading through enemies.
The second one is a Rogue one called Scoundrel’s Leathers. When you have Inner Side active and unlimited Energy, you can spawn a random trap.
Dolmen Stone is a new Druid Legendary.
925 is the max Item Power you can get on your gear in Season 2.
Target Farming Uniques from Bosses
You can now target farm Uniques in Season 2 from specific bosses. The bosses are also available on Eternal non-Seasonal realms.
Class Changes
Next, the developers talk in detail about class adjustments coming in the latest patch.
- Address issues with each Class that the community is talking about: Changes are mostly unique to each Class, meant to target specific pain points. What you will see here today are some examples, not a list of all changes.
- One general change: Fortify amounts are changed from being based on Base Life to Max Life. This means that increasing your Maximum Life will make these effects stronger.
- During the Season 1 live stream, Blizard mentioned that sometimes they will need to make adjustments to things that are overperforming.
- The overwhelming majority of changes being made to Classes are buffs.
These are three situations that they are looking at right now.
- Some builds and playstyles that have dramatically outperformed others.
- Fixing unintended interactions that result in extreme outliers.
- Design that has the potential for infinite power scaling.
This will be particularly important going forward as they add Leaderboards in the future.
Necromancer Changes
- Ossified Essence damage bonus per Essence past 50 reduced from 1 to 0.5%. Even after this change, Ossified Essence is still a contender for the strongest Key Passive in the game.
- Bone Graft Legendary Paragon node maximum Essence per stack reduced from 3 to 2, total maximum Essence reduced from 24 to 16.
- Minions have been buffed.
- Death’s Defense is now baseline.
- Golem Basic Attack increased by 100%.
- Blood Golem Active damage increased by 55%.
- Iron Golem Active damage increased by 15%.
- Many Minion Paragon Node damage values have been increased.
- Coldbringer’s Aspect now allows any Skeletal Mages to cast Blizzard instead of only Cold Skeletal Mages.
- Skeletal Warriors Inherit Thorns, Skeletal Mages Inherit Thorns, and Golem inherits Thorns have been removed and replaced by a unified Minions Inherit Thorns affix that can appear on Rings, Shields, and Gloves.
- Shields now have Armor.
Barbarian Changes
- Supreme Wrath of the Berserker maximum damage bonus is now capped at x100%.
- Some Barbarian Paragon Boards have received buffs.
- Berserking’s bonus damage is now multiplicative instead of additive.
- The Of Ancestral Force Legendary now grants bonus damage to the quake and the base skill instead of having a separate damage range on the quake.
Druid Changes
Druids are in a pretty good place, so they aren’t getting as many changes.
- Aspect of the Rampaging Werebeast Critical Strike damage bonus is now capped at x200%.
- Ravens have been buffed. Passive damage increased by 20%, active damage increased by 55%. Enhanced Ravens Bonus Critical Strike Chance increased from 5% to 8%.
- Rabies damage increased by 27%, Half of Natural Rabies Spread Speed bonus made baseline (50%). Baseline Rabies now spread 50% faster.
Sorcerer Changes
- Incinerate’s ramp-up time is being reduced from 4 to 2. The total damage is still the same.
- Enhanced Frozen Orb now grants additional explosion damage against Elites.
- Winter and Electrocute Paragon Glyphs now have practical use on the Paragon Board.
Rogue Changes
The devs feel the Rogue is in a good place, so it won’t see as many updates as other classes. They’ve buffed 4 Basic Skills:
- Blade Shift Lucky Hit Chance increased from 35% to 50%.
- Enhanced Blade Shift now gives the full 20% Movement Speed bonus immediately.
- Heartseeker Critical Strike Chance bonus increased from 3% to 5% per stack (cap is still).
- Forceful Arrow Lucky Hit Chance increased from 40% to 50%.
- Impetus Passive distance from damage buff reduced from 15 to 12 meters. Now increases the damage of your next non-Basic attack.
Damage Buckets
In Season 1, Crit Damage and Vulnerable were different buckets. Mixing buckets gave multiplicative damage bonuses for their entire amount, so everyone stacked both. As a result, many builds were left behind because dots cannot crit, etc.
In Season 2, Crit Damage, Vulnerable,. and Overpower are different buckets. Mixing buckets gives multiplicative damage bonuses, but capped per bucket. Extra bonus damageto these categories is additive.
- Vulnerable – x20%
- Crit Damage – x50%
- Overpower Damage – x50%
Note: Blizzard fixed a lot of how Overpower damage is calculated, it works much better now.
Overall impact:
- Nominal damage numbers will go down.
- Mixing damage types is less required.
- Individual damage types are more equal in value.
Damage Buckets Goals
- They want players to be rewarded for investing to their primary vector of damage (ex. Blood Necros invest in + Overpower Damage), and to then find other vectors of damage scaling as they customize their char.
- They don’t want the game to only be simpler with this change (only removing this synergy and giving nothing back).
Adding effects to give scaling back, but with player interaction instead of baseline. Goal with these changes are two-fold:
- They want to add some multiplicative player power back in a more interesting way.
- They want the itemization experience, particularly in the latter portions of the game, to be more interesting.
They are adding 2 Paragon Glyphs to every class to allow various Legendary effects to scale. The devs plan o do more of this kind of design in the future.
Patch 1.2.1
Patch 1.2.1 is going out before BlizzCon, but after Season 2.
- Blizzard is adding a training dummy to Kyovashad that you can configure.
- A Paragon Board Reset feature is being added.
Q&A
The developers are now answering player questions!
- The devs are fine with some skills being used less than others, but they will be looking at underperforming skills in the game.
- A Diablo 4 roadmap is coming at BlizzCon 2023.
- More social features are coming, but nothing to announce right now.
- They designed a lot of passives and Legendary effects “when you shout, you gain X”.
- They are adding 10 new Glyphs in Season 2.
- The changes to CC are only affecting incoming CC not outgoing CC. Specific changes will be highlighted in the patch notes shortly after the stream.
- Blizzard looked at Monster / Boss Power. Only Bone Spear Necro and bugged builds could beat her comfortably. In Season of Blood, they nerfed the boss to a degree where the average builds can defeat her. The goal is for more builds to reach the level of power to take her down.
Stream Link
You can watch the stream below.
